They were sentenced to indefinite detention at Her Majesty's pleasure, and remained in custody until a Parole Board decision in June 2001 recommended their release on a lifelong licence at age 18.

[6][7] Closed-circuit television (CCTV) at the New Strand Shopping Centre in Bootle on 12 February 1993 showed Thompson and Venables casually observing children, apparently selecting a target.

[15][16] Thompson and Venables took Bulger to the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, around 1⁄4 mile (400 metres) from the New Strand Shopping Centre, where they dropped him on his head, and he suffered injuries to his face.

[4][21][32] When Venables was released on parole, his psychiatrist, Susan Bailey, reported that "visiting and revisiting the issue with Jon as a child, and now as an adolescent, he gives no account of any sexual element to the offence.

The breakthrough came when a woman, upon seeing slightly enhanced images of the two boys on national television, recognised Venables, and remembered seeing him playing truant with Thompson in the Bootle area that day.

Early press reports and police statements had referred to Bulger being seen with "two youths" (suggesting that the killers were teenagers), the ages of the boys being difficult to ascertain from the images captured by CCTV.

[9] At the trial, the lead prosecution counsel Richard Henriques successfully rebutted the principle of doli incapax, which presumes that young children cannot be held legally responsible for their actions.

[41] Thompson and Venables did not speak during the trial, and the case against them was based to a large extent on the more than 20 hours of tape-recorded police interviews with the boys, which were played back in court.

"[35] The prosecution admitted a number of exhibits during the trial, including a box of 27 bricks, a blood-stained stone, Bulger's underpants, and the rusty iron bar described as a railway fishplate.

The editors of The Sun handed a petition bearing nearly 280,000 signatures to Michael Howard, the Home Secretary, in a bid to increase the time spent by both boys in custody.

[49] Tony Blair, then Shadow Home Secretary, gave a speech in Wellingborough during which he said: "We hear of crimes so horrific they provoke anger and disbelief in equal proportions ...

[4] The boys received education and rehabilitation; despite initial problems, Venables was said to have eventually made good progress at Red Bank, resulting in him being kept there for the full eight years, despite the facility only being a short-stay remand unit.

[63] In June 2001, after a six-month review, the parole board ruled the boys were no longer a threat to public safety and could be released, as their minimum tariff had expired in February of that year.

[4] The terms of their release included the following: They were not allowed to contact each other or Bulger's family; they were prohibited from visiting the Merseyside region;[67] curfews may be imposed on them, and they must report to probation officers.

The paper also stated that the Bulger family's lawyers had consulted psychiatric experts in order to present the parole panel with a report that suggested Thompson is an undiagnosed psychopath, citing his lack of remorse during his trial and arrest.

[79] The Manchester Evening News published details that suggested the names of the secure institutions in which the pair were housed, in breach of the injunction against publicity that had been renewed early in 2001.

[81] In April 2007, documents released under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 confirmed that the Home Office had spent £13,000 on an injunction to prevent a foreign magazine from revealing the new identities of Thompson and Venables.

In passing sentence, Deputy High Bailiff Alastair Montgomerie said that the teenager had "put that person at significant risk of serious harm" and in a "perilous position" by making the allegation.

[85] On 25 February 2013, the Attorney General's Office announced that it was instituting contempt of court proceedings against several people who had allegedly published photographs online showing Thompson or Venables as adults.

[86] A spokesman commented: On 26 April 2013, two men received suspended jail sentences of nine months after admitting to contempt of court, by publishing photographs that they claimed to be of Venables and Thompson on Facebook and Twitter.

[89] On 31 January 2019, a man and a woman pleaded guilty to eight contempt-of-court offences at the High Court after they admitted to posting photos on social media that they claimed identified Venables; both received suspended prison sentences.

In April 2011, in the aftermath of his 2010 imprisonment, these allegations were outlined in a Sunday Times Magazine article written by David James Smith, who had been following the Bulger case since the 1993 trial, and again later in a BBC documentary titled Jon Venables: What went wrong?

[4][96] A spokesman for St Helens Council denied that the incident had been covered up, saying, "All allegations were thoroughly investigated by an independent team on the orders of the Home Office and chaired by Arthur de Frischling, a retired prison governor.

[4] After a period of apparently reduced supervision, Venables began excessively drinking, taking drugs, and downloading child abuse images, as well as visiting Merseyside, which was a breach of his licence.

[109] Chief Inspector Tracie O'Gara of Lancashire Constabulary stated: "An individual who was targeted four-and-a-half years ago was not Jon Venables, and now he has left the area.

[citation needed] The judge, Mr. Justice David Bean, ruled that Venables' new identity could not be revealed, but the media were allowed to report that he had been living in Cheshire at the time of his arrest.

[121] A spokesman for the Ministry of Justice commented: "Such a change of identity is extremely rare, and granted only when the police assess that there is clear and credible evidence of a sustained threat to the offender's life on release into the community.

"[122] The incident occurred after a man from Exeter posted photographs on a website devoted to identifying paedophiles, allegedly showing Venables as an adult, and revealing his name.

[138] Although she had not seen the play, Denise Fergus denounced it as a work that was "just designed to try and shock people and grab publicity" and that "anyone who would stoop so low as to use my son's death as a subject for comedy is sick and pathetic.

[145] A storyline in the British soap opera Hollyoaks was set to begin in December 2009, but cancelled after the series makers gave Bulger's mother Denise Fergus a private screening.